Right Time, Right Place Adventure

Readers in the past may remember that my washing machine broke, so I've become a laundromat customer. Yesterday was cold and rainy, no fun to be running around on errands. Today looked better so I went out on this errand. On the way home, I chanced upon a wagon train, part of Minnesota's celebration of 150 years of statehood. On Friday I came upon a different commemoration. I was coming back from the Mano a Mano warehouse over the Mendota Bridge. The walks on the bridge were lined with American Indians protesting 150 years of genocide. There was nowhere safe to stop for photos. That is the only reason that this blog entry is not more balanaced.

Warehouse Adventures

I've written before about volunteering for Mano a Mano. Today was the first time I've ever been to the warehouse. After we sort things at the Mano a Mano office, boxes are transferred to the warehouse. Large objects such as hospital beds and dental chairs go directly to the warehouse.

This weekend Mano a Mano is able to ship 20 tons of materials to Bolivia through the Denton Program implemented by USAID. How much is 20 tons? The photo of the hospital beds above shows slightly more than 1000 pounds. It really doesn't take long at all to load in 20 tons. The wheelchairs pictured in the warehouse are all loaded in a truck and will be transferred to the MSP airport in the morning.

My Friday job usually is to sort and package the medications. Those boxes all end up with a label of 22. It was fun to see some "22" boxes in the warehouse, now shrink wrapped and ready for shipping. These will go off in another shipment of 40 tons later than month.

Adventures with Tears

This evening was graduation. We have over 800 graduates so afterwards it's a mob scene. I stumbled onto two graduates in the auditorium lobby and one grabbed me for a hug. She said, "I wouldn't be here it if it wasn't for you." This student was in my fall classes. She came to me explaining she was struggling with depression and her doctor wanted her to drop out of school. She explained she really didn't want to drop out and wanted to know what I thought. We worked out that she would simply do what she could with the fall courses and I'd give her incompletes for the courses. I also avoided placing any spring semester students with her preceptor, so that she had a place to finish the practicum.

Recently I had begun worrying about her. If she didn't get these courses finished the grades would turn to an F at the end of this semester. Then suddenly in the e-mail I began to receive her undone assignments. In the last two weeks she has turned in everything and I've turned her incompletes into grades. But even before tonight I had good news. Her practicum activity involved working on a huge project between two state agencies, and now she has been asked to continue on the project as a paid consultant. She is thrilled with the confidence that has been given to her. She is also heading for graduate school to become a Nurse Practitioner to specialize eventually in pallitative care.

I was in tears with the hug and statement, "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you." It's not been an academic year that I've enjoyed at all. It is so good to find out I did something for someone!

Adventures with a name

This morning I was watching Where in the world is Matt Lauer? I was startled to see an e-mail question came to the Today Show from Lorene in Minnesota. It sounded exactly like a question I might have asked, but it wasn't me. This afternoon I searched White Pages.com and learned there are 124 women in Minnesota with my first name. The same web site shows the most frequent place for this name is Texas. Who would have known?

Adventures Unreported

Recently my work schedule has been so busy that I've not had a minute to myself. I decided it was time to find a few minutes for myself, so I called my older daughter and we went to the Como Park Pavilion on Saturday afternoon. Here's just one of the beautiful flowers we found.

Another unexpected adventure. The school bus shows what happened outside my office window this morning. According to reports the school bus broke an axle and went out of control, glancing off a tanker truck. Thankfully it was a lot of excitement and no injuries to any person, except perhaps for the artist who recently completed the sculpture into which the bus crashed. On the other hand, maybe it was good that the sculpture was there. It may have kept the bus from traveling all the way into the library wall.

Adventures with Winter

Today I had to return to my winter coat. The temperature was only just a couple of degrees above freezing! We are all plenty tired of winter. Here in the Twin Cities we are more inconvienced by it. The temperature is cold and we got primarily rain rather than snow, but on Thursday the wind was very high for this part of the state. We can be thankful we aren't in Duluth where there is 9 more inches of snow, 60 mph wind, and 12 foot waves crashing in from the lake.

Adventures with a Bouncing Ball

Tonight when I came home I noticed a boy across the street hitting a ball off the garage door. I couldn't quite figure what he was doing. I stopped to tell him about the people who lived there before. They had a son who started hitting hockey pucks off that door as soon as he could stand up and walk. By the time he was five he was spending all his free time in the summer on roller skates puck-handling up and down the sidewalks.

This new neighbor boy was a bit amazed at the story and went to say, "Well, lacross is my game." That's not a sentence we hear every day in the Midwest.